vietnam 2019. Day one

just out for a ride check the blog out

www.2019vietnam.blogspot.com

Day one of our riding 

Our day today started relatively  early in fact i was in the kitchen before the staff had arrived but ever the helpful they apologised profusely and offered to make me a special coffee. We then had the difficult task of working out what would be needed on the bike trip and that we could send by courier to Ho chi min city for us to collect in 14 days. 

Traveling by bike is always a challenge and having to decide what to carry became harder and harder, I initially started with a bigger pile going by bike than by courier and there was just no way that was happening, so slowly I migrated things over to the courier pile all they time deciding what was more important and extra pair of socks or spare ram mounts not as easy  a decision as you might think there was an awful amount of weighing one think against the next. 

Soon the two piles became manageable and a stuff sac packed tightly for the bike I also intended to carry my arcterex rucksack as i had some delicate hard drives which i wanted on my back 

 When we arrived at the reception Tanth was waiting a minute figure with long black hair happily smoking a cigarette  introductions made bar bill settled and we were soon into a taxi to team up with our bikes, 

I had already played with mine a bright red Honda CRF makes was a similar white version Thankfully as i had predicted the seat was not the perilously narrow seat that i had seen on a friends bike in Taunton but slightly wider and certainly much more comfortable. 

Bikes loaded, of interest here to ash the kit to the bike we were supplied with rather long pieces of rubber about 2 cm wide, at first i was quite worried about this but was prepared to try it.

With little more than a short follow me we were off into the Hanoi traffic heading west 

The road seemed to be typical for here 70% scooters and 2 cars with large lorries making up the rest . There seems little regard to what we would consider to be "traffic laws" it quite the done thing to travel in the wrong direction. But all i can say, as in India it works"